“And what put you on to the Dashwoods?” Sir Henry Clithering asks Miss Marple, “mystified” at how she solved the mystery of the missing pearls. The answer is pretty simple: they were the only non-recurring characters at the “real old-fashioned Christmas” party hosted by the Bantrys. We know Arthur and Dolly didn’t take the pearls. Or Jane Marple. Or her nephew Raymond and his wife Joan. Which leaves the Dashwoods. I mean, a suspicious eye is rolled in the direction of the new under-gardener but we never so much as see him. So it will have to be the Dashwoods.
Knowing the literary background is also a help. A big clue is provided by the fact that Ronald Dashwood is reading Dorothy Sayers’s Hangman’s Holiday. Or just the name Dashwood itself, which is borrowed from Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. And of course the fact that Dolly just doesn’t like them very much. Once you factor all of this in, the stuff having to do with pins and mistletoe is almost beside the point. I wasn’t even sure what was going on there, but at the end I didn’t need to be.
What Ruth Ware assumes you’re not to be alerted by is the age difference between Major Dashwood, retired, and his wife, said to be in her “early thirties.” That’s just the way it was, back in the day. I did sort of scratch my head a bit though at Mrs. Bantry excusing Ronald, who appears to be a student, for his feeling bored at being “cooped up in the country with a lot of middle-aged people.” Who is middle-aged? I think Raymond and Joan are a young couple (she is revealed to be pregnant at the end). As noted, Mrs. Dashwood is in her early thirties. Major Dashwood and Colonel Bantry are both retired. Miss Marple is simply ancient. I suppose Mrs. Bantry is middle-aged, and maybe she’s just projecting onto the others.
Alex Good 
Whomst is Ruth Ware??
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The author of the story. It’s not one of Christie’s originals but was part of an anthology of Miss Marple stories written by other writers.
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There seem to be a lot of pinching dead authors characters about.
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Supposed to be a new Marple novel out this coming year. People like the familiar name brands. These are all licensed by the Christie estate though, so they’re not really being pinched. More like farmed out.
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Ah, a money spinner for them then.
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Oh yeah.
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This isn’t a novel, it’s a short story, right? Missing pearls hardly seems novel-worthy.
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This is a short story, yes. I tried to pick something with a Christmas theme.
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Me, too! I finally got around to ordering this:
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I’ve got a lot of those Penzler anthologies but not that one. They’re great! And a ton of reading because they’re usually around 1000 double-columned pages.
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I put a couple others in my list at the same time. Hope it doesn’t take me 2 or 3 years to get them like it has with this one!
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I recognize the name Ruth Ware but can’t say what she’s actually written.
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She’s written some YA titles about witches and some crime thrillers. This is the only thing by here I’ve read.
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Ahhh. YA…
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